Virginia mandates rape by the state

I've been trying to find words to express my disgust with this turn of events all day. I've been unsuccessful in coming with anything more coherent than why the fuck are these vile, God bothering assholes allowed to run free in a civil society? So I'm just going to archive this by outsourcing to Dahlia who manages to calmly describe this horrifying conservative attack on women:

This week, the Virginia state Legislature passed a bill that would require women to have an ultrasound before they may have an abortion. Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced. Since a proposed amendment to the bill—a provision that would have had the patient consent to this bodily intrusion or allowed the physician to opt not to do the vaginal ultrasound—failed on 64-34 vote, the law provides that women seeking an abortion in Virginia will be forcibly penetrated for no medical reason. I am not the first person to note that under any other set of facts, that would constitute rape under state law. ...

Yet physical intrusion by government into the vagina of a pregnant woman is so urgently needed that the woman herself should be forced to pay for the privilege.

Whatever happens in the commonwealth, it’s fair to say it’s no accident that this week the Legislature also enacted a "personhood" law defining life as beginning at conception—a law that may someday criminalize contraception and some miscarriages as well as abortion. Today was not a good day in the War on Women. Abortion is still legal in America. Physically invading a woman’s body against her will still isn’t. ...

Adding, I also wonder, as Charlie asks, where the hell is the AMA? If child molesting priests are allowed conscience exemptions, shouldn't doctors be allowed to refuse to violate their sworn oath? They should be suing these bastards for telling them they can't.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Darrell Issa stacks the deck

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is at it again, holding yet another inane hearing. This was the scene in his committee room this morning:

Yes, his first panel of witnesses was solely comprised of male religious leaders whose consciences are inflamed by the new rule on women's health services that include contraception coverage. Unsurprisingly, Democrats were enraged and demanded at least one witness to balance this skewed panel.

Ranking committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had asked Issa to include a female witness at the hearing, but the Chairman refused, arguing that “As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.”

You can view the rejected testimony here.

Apparently, after the media caught wind of the melee, Issa added a couple of women bringing the total witness list to eleven. One assumes he found women who agree a handful of aging Catholic men, sworn to lifelong celibacy, should dictate government policy on contraceptives for the entire female population of the USA.

You have to love the name of the hearing: “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?”. Atrios joked on the twitter machine this morning that the Democrats should hold an all-female hearing on the reproductive health of men. I'd agree. Maybe they could call it something like: "Pelvic Thrust: Does the GOP's Support For Easy Availability of Viagra, Risk Back Injury, Encourage Promiscuity in Men and Enable Out of Wedlock Pregnancies?"

Meanwhile, in a related development, at another hearing Rep. Jeanine Notter gravely informed her colleagues that "health plans shouldn't cover birth control because it causes prostate cancer." No, she wasn't joking.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

GOP women come out for contraception compromise

This is heartening. The Republican women Senators from Maine come out in favor of contraception for all:

Sens. Olympia Snowe (ME) and Susan Collins (ME) — both of whom have sponsored legislation requiring insurers to offer contraception benefits in all health plans — are in favor of the new compromise...

Meanwhile, the old men of the GOP who don't give a flying leap about birth control as long as they can still get their Cialis, are going all in:

Republicans in the senate seem determined to oppose the compromise and have introduced legislation that would allow employers or individuals to opt out of any benefit that undermines their moral beliefs. “They don’t have the authority under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution to tell someone in this country or some organization in this country what their religious beliefs are,” McConnell told “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “This issue will not go away until the administration simply backs down,” he said.

Their desperate search for a wedge issue that works has gone beyond pathetic. You might think these ancient idiots who have spent their life in government would know there's nothing in the First Amendment that authorizes a conscience clause. The Church has already received much more in trade for that old trope than they deserve.

But sure, they can keep the issue alive for as long as care to carp about it. In fact, I'm hoping they dodder on and ante up all their chips on that loser bet. They may think they're holding the aces in this game, but it looks like a handful of useless jokers from where I sit.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Contraception contretemps

It's been really interesting to see how many ways Obama's contraception modification has been framed today. The reactions have ranged from ha ha, Obama pawned the GOPers on this one to ZOMG Obama sold women out again. And that's just on the left.

I was most surprised by Charlie Pierce's reaction. He called it a graceful dive but I'm confused by his disdain for the terms of the compromise.

And what's to prevent the clever Catholic CEO of Greedy Bastard Health Insurance, LLC from deciding that he has an objection of conscience to providing contraception as part of his company's insurance plan.

As I understand it, the Republican's bill would allow that but unless the insurance company is run by a Catholic church, Obama's rules wouldn't. And then there was this bit.

(If there's one thing that insurance companies produce more of than profits for their executives, it's arcane reasons not to do something. And, as for the institutional Church, it has no earthly reason to accept this deal. It doesn't think anyone should use birth control for any reason ever. If it accepts the deal, by which it essentially farms out its conscience to insurance companies, it looks foolish. If it sticks to its guns and rejects the deal, what's the president going to do? Run against the Church? He pretty plainly doesn't have the stomach for that. The Clan is empowered again. The comeback from the conspiracy to obstruct justice of the crime of sexual assault is complete.

I get being pissed off that the same Church which covered up its ugly history of pedophilia gets away with hypocrisy in claiming moral grounds on contraception, or anything, but nothing about this rule prevents holding them to account for it in the future. And from where I sit, Obama took a pretty bold stand against allowing them to dictate health care choices for women. Furthermore, as Greg points out Obama reversed the dynamic in the debate. The so-called attack on religious liberty has been negated, leaving the Church and the GOP with the sole position of being against any reproductive health care at all. Not a popular stand.

As for the insurers, they save money by passing out birth control instead of paying for abortions and pregnancies. They'll still be scum sucking skimmers, but that would true in any case. It's who they are and what they do. Granted this isn't a glorious victory, but not seeing how this isn't a win for Team Obama and for women. It's certainly more than we had three weeks ago.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Pink, pink, you stink: Komen backs down

I've been offline for a couple of days so the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation fiasco played out without me. I see it didn't take long for the pink ribbon people to back down in the face of overwhelming criticism. Komen announced today they would restore Planned Parenthood funding.

The official line is they realized they made a mistake in basing the decision to defund on a poltical investigation and absent an actual criminal finding of guilt. Thinking it's more likely it's because their major sponsors looked likely to jump, wealthy pro choice advocates wanted their money back and insurrection within the foundation itself. "Two top Komen officials resigned in protest following the announcement. Local chapters of Komen also rebelled, pledging to defy the order and continue funding Planned Parenthood."

Furthermore, the enormous pushback exposed unsavory details about their spending. It appears Komen for the Cure is a gigantic scam:

Komen’s founder and CEO, Nancy Brinker, is a big money Republican with ties to the past three Republican administration who received a political appointment from George W. Bush as a reward for her fundraising largesse. She draws a salary of $459,000 annually, money well spent compared to the 39% of its budget the foundation spends on “public health education” (i.e., marketing itself). Not to mention that they also spend a million bucks per year in legal fees to threaten other non-profit groups who use the phrase For the Cure, to which Komen(tm) claims to have intellectual property rights.

It couldn't be more clear the choice to pull Planned Parenthood's funding in the first place was driven by highly placed anti-choice wingers within the foundation. Under the circumstances, the walk back is too little, too late.

Planned Parenthood issued a gracious statement thanking Komen for the reversal however, one has to ask why anyone should support Komen ever again. I figure just about everyone has lost someone to breast cancer and these people have preyed on their wish to help find a cure mainly to enrich themselves. Seems to me pro-choicers would do better to donate directly to Planned Parenthood and skip the middlewomen.

Much more in a dozen other posts at Balloon Juice and Memeorandum. [graphic via]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Sanctity of Life

Shorter ""Pro-lifers": Ban medically safe abortions and sanctify forced pregnancies or we're going to kill you. [Roy Edroso has the longer.]

Of course the sanctity of life stops at the womb. No way they want those "dead beat" poor kids to get health care or free lunch at school after they're born.

The difference between the left and the "right"

I wouldn't normally link to Hot Air, but it's worth noting that Allahpundit is surprised lefties are defending Christine O'Donnell in the wake of Gawker's disgusting hit-whoring in publishing a smear piece about O'Donnell's wild night with some anonymous boor in Philly.

Allapundit marvels, "but this is worth blogging anyway for the unusual degree of bipartisan contempt directed at the “scoop” in question."

Well that's the difference between the left and the "right." Lefties will call out misogyny, no matter where it comes from. Conservatives could take a lesson from that in light of the recent events in Kentucky. The left didn't launch into "the bitch deserved it defense" even when the target of the abuse is a political opponent. And Gawker was just stomping on O'Donnell's reputation, not literally on her head.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Happy Birthday Women's Sufferage

The USA is 234 years old. Women have only had the right to vote for 90 years.

A lot of changes for women's rights happened even later, both socially and in the workplace. Also racial discrimination was only outlawed 46 years ago. Remember that whenever you get frustrated by the glacially slow pace of political change.

Stupid Bart Stupak amendment - Updated

The line between Church and State gets ever fainter. It appears the Dems will cave to the fundie crowd and have agreed to have an up or down vote on Stupak's anti-choice amendment. The upshot being, virtually no insurer, public or private will be allowed to pay for perfectly legal abortions.

However, you feel about the existence of abortion, the fact remains it's a legitimate medical procedure. And it astounds me that the same people who want to force women to have babies they might not be able to afford, simply in order to satisfy their personal religious beliefs, also rail about "welfare babies" and don't want to spend a cent on public health care to keep them healthy after they're born. Idiots and hypocrites. Makes me want to break crockery in frustration.

Update: Good explanation of the amendment here.

Update two: There's now a petition you can sign to express your outrage and pledge to support a pro-choice primary challenger.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Code Pink Changes Anti-war Approach

Contrary to the wild rumors circulating a couple of days ago, Code Pink did not suddenly go pro-war but after spending two weeks in Afghanistan and talking to women there, the group is taking a more nuanced position.

Medea Benjamin, a founder of the group, Code Pink, said in an interview on Friday that most of the 150 Afghans she and seven colleagues had met with told them, “We’re afraid of the Taliban coming back in, we’re afraid of more civil war, we’re afraid of more chaos.”

They talked about responsible withdrawal,” Ms. Benjamin said.

But those same people also made clear that they considered NATO troops magnets for violence whose presence incited anti-foreign sentiment and encouraged impoverished villagers to pick up weapons for the insurgency.

“Everybody we talked to said that most of the Taliban are poor rural people, $10-a-day Taliban, who are doing this for economic reasons,” she said. “If you want to encourage people to stop fighting, encourage them to work.”

Code Pink will continue pressuring Congress and the White House to come up with an exit plan. However, they've softened their approach a bit. They're saying, "Don’t send more troops. But don’t pull out precipitously, either." [via Steve Hynd]

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

The "conscience" rule

While the majority of the media and seemingly most of the blogosphere are distracted with pondering what Obama might do and what his cabinet appointments might mean, Bush is busily making new rules to solidify his anti-choice agenda.

The outgoing Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new "right of conscience" rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control.

For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion.

It also seeks to cover more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to "an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments," the draft rule said.

This is so many shades of wrong. I can live with a doctor or nurse being able to refuse to conduct procedures they don't believe in, but there has to be a limit to how far down the rule extends and how broadly it applies in order to protect the public health. If a practitioner doesn't want to perform abortions or offer pregnancy planning services, they should at least be required to advise the patient that such services exist and allow them the choice of being treated by a competitor. They should also have to disclose their bias prior to accepting a patient. A pharmacist need not be compelled to dispense birth control but then they should be precluded from accepting any prescriptions for anything from practitioners that prescribe it.

If professionals, who enter into fields knowing full well the range of services they would be expected to offer want to withhold those services as a matter of personal principle, fine, but they should also pay a price for their bullying others to conform to their views.

In the larger context this push to codify the merging of church and state is just more of the typical Orwellian doublespeak that has been so typical of this administration. It endangers the public and is unconscionable in the extreme.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]

What liberal feminists think

I'll just let Rachel field this one.


[Via Matt]

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]

Please help save access to birth control

It's been a while since I've asked you to do a point and click activism but this one is important and time is short. Via Southern Beale, Planned Parenthood is trying to drum up some public input into this Bush administration scheme to eliminate birth control from Title X funded programs that serve the poor.

President Bush's regulatory change lets health care providers define abortion, which could threaten access to birth control and broader reproductive health care, and allow federal funding for so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" that refuse to inform patients of or provide patients with a full range of reproductive health care options.

Now that the new rule has been issued officially, we need you to speak out during the official 30-day comment period before the rule can go into effect.

We need as many people as possible to submit comments to the Department of Health and Human Services before the official comment period ends on September 25.

If you have time to edit the form letter, all the better, but even signing the point and click form will help greatly. It's just a name and email input. Less than thirty seconds to save access to birth control.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]

Roe v. Wade

By Libby

In case anyone needs to be reminded why Roe v. Wade was enacted in the first place, Avedon flags this testimonial from a medical care provider.

There I saw and treated almost every complication of illegal abortion that one could conjure, done either by the patient herself or by an abortionist - often unknowing, unskilled and probably uncaring. Yet the patient never told us who did the work, or where and under what conditions it was performed. She was in dire need of our help to complete the process or, as frequently was the case, to correct what damage might have been done.

The patient also did not explain why she had attempted the abortion, and we did not ask. This was a decision she made for herself, and the reasons were hers alone. Yet this much was clear: The woman had put herself at total risk, and literally did not know whether she would live or die.

This, too, was clear: Her desperate need to terminate a pregnancy was the driving force behind the selection of any method available.

The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous "coat hanger" - which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in - perhaps the patient herself - found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it.

Much more at Avedon's link, including a moving family memory.

For myself, having grown up not far outside of metro NYC, I can recall the stories, which occurred regularly, of women found dead in dark alleys from botched abortions. It was to save those lives that Roe came to be and if the culture warriors succeed in abolishing that already heartwrenching choice, we'll see them again.

If you're too young to remember those times, trust me on this. It was worse to see women die of desperation than it is to see pregnancies terminated.

Annika Calls it a Day

expatbrian

I just read this story about the upcoming retirement of Annika Sorenstam. I'll miss her.
Sorenstam has dominated women's golf for 15 years. Out of the 293 professional tournaments she's played in, she's finished in the top 10 in 206, winning 72 including 10 majors.

Additionally she claims eight Rolex Player of the Year awards, eight money titles, six Vare Trophies for lowest scoring average, eight Solheim Cup selections and more than $22 million in career earnings. She is in the LPGA Hall of Fame.

She has been the only woman so far to enter a mens pro tourney and actually be competitve. She is highly respected by both the men and women players and has certainly done her share to put women's golf on the map and women's sports in general.

Condoms for Catholics - Brazil leads the way

by expatbrian

I read the BBC everyday because they carry interesting stories that often don't appear in the US online press, at least not the press sites that Google News collects.

Brazil has started a program of harvesting rubber from rubber trees in the Amazon rain forest to be used to make latex condoms. To me, what's significant about this program is the fact that Brazil has the largest Catholic population on earth. Way to go!

This is truly a win-win situation. Poor villagers will be employed to harvest the rubber and work in the processing factory. There is no damage to the Amazon rain forest areas where the trees are located. And the condoms produced will be given away free in Brazil's ongoing effort to fight AIDS.

The new state-run factory is in the north-western state of Acre, and will initially produce 100 million condoms a year, which will be known by the name Natex.

Officials believe that not only will it generate income for Amazon residents, but it will involve using a product which is widely available and can be obtained without destroying large areas of the rainforest.

The Catholic Church has always criticized Brazil's policy of distributing free condoms with their tired, archaic argument that it promotes promiscuity. Using that logic, it follows that the church itself must be issuing condoms to it's own priests thus, explaining their promiscuous behavior. Jerks. I can't wait to read the church's response to this latest and truly inspired idea.

The factory will benefit at least 500 families and provide 150 jobs in the town of Xapuri which has a population of around 15,000 people. The health ministry says the condoms will be the only ones in the world made of latex harvested from a tropical forest, and will reduce the reliance on foreign imports.

According to the Brazilian government, they are the world's single largest buyer of condoms and have purchased over a billion in recent years to give away free to their people.

International Women's Day - 100 Years

by expatbrian

A confession from us (men) to you (women)

March 8, 2008 marks the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, a day initiated in the USA in February, 1908 by women demanding the right to vote and other equal treatment. The very fact that 100 years later we still have this day is a testament to the failure of this effort. It is still overwhelmingly a man's world.

Why is that? Why, when America is based on equality, equal access and equal freedoms, are women still struggling to attain that equality? Why, in this 21st civilized century are women still oppressed by men, even in this great country of ours?

Well, we men have a confession to make. It's because we are in charge and we don't want you to be equal. Never have - never will.

We insist on branding you as the weaker sex because we are frighteningly aware of how strong you are. For decades in the US, and still today in some parts of the world, we did not allow you an equal level of education. Not because we thought your place was in the home raising babies, although we firmly believe that it is, but because we didn't and still don't want you to be as educated, as prepared as we are. If you were, you might want some of our jobs and our power and as men we simply don't want and can't allow that to happen.

How effectively have we kept you in your place? Damn effectively. Of the 1,897 citizens who have served in the US Senate since 1789, a grand total of 35 have been women. 16 of those are serving right now. So, over the period of our nations history, 1.85% of the Senate seats have been held by women.

In the House, of the thousands who have served over the last 2 1/4 centuries, just 216 have been women including the 74 that are there now. Between both the House and the Senate, 16.3% are women. (The global average for women at parliamentary level is 17%)

That's about as much equality as we're willing to give.

What about that most noble of bodies, the Supreme Court? Ah, now that is a different story! These are not elected positions but appointments by the president HIMself. Of the 110 justices that have served on the Court, a grand total of.........drumroll.......... 2 have been women (1.8%). Again, equality American style.

And of course there has never been a president from among you. There may be in the near future, but that's ok now. Afterall, corporate America controls the actions of even the president, and corporate America is controlled by us.

These numbers are utterly justified because, if men were not in control of all three branches of government - at all times - then we couldn't control your sexuality, what you do with their bodies, and all the other roles that we allow you to play in society. We certainly can't leave these most important decisions up to women themselves. Shudder at the thought.

An excellent example of this is Roe Wade. Was this law passed because you demanded control over family planning through access to abortions? Only partially. Had the majority of men been against your right to choose, you wouldn't have it. But we finally realized that abortion rights also serve us, the men.

Afterall, without Roe/Wade, if every woman - every time she became pregnant - had to give birth, a whole lot more of US would be paying a whole lot more child support and marrying a whole lot more of YOU that we really didn't want to. And when we ultimately divorced you, we'd have to put up with that pesky alimony. That would be troublesome, problematic, inconvenient and just plain messy for us. So, despite religious adversity, even in today's ultra conservative Christian USA, Roe Wade is a-okay.

As men, we are brutally aware of our nearly absolute dependence upon women. It's been that way since we suckled at our mother's breast. This dependence, which we hide behind a facade of machoness, makes us resent you. Some of us even secretly hate you. To vent our anger and resentment we belittle and dehumanize you. We tell dirty jokes about you. We sexualize you unmercifully. We even beat and rape you.

Why? Because we can. Afterall, we are bigger and stronger than you are. And have more power. We hold all the cards. Sure, we allow laws that make those acts criminal. We have to in a 'free' society. But if you go public with your victimization, we will humiliate you, expose your most hidden secrets in court, and generally make your life miserable. So we have done everything we can to convince you to tolerate us, even build us up and make us feel masculine.

We like diversity in our women so, year by year we change you. Through the fashion and cosmetics and retail industries, which we control, we tell you how to dress, how long or short your skirts should be, what color lipstick is 'in', what uncomfortable shoes to wear and how to fix your hair just right. And we generally charge you more for these accessories than we do other men. We know you will eagerly pay the price. But, hey! We don't force you to wear burkhas. Or do we?

And by the way, there's a little stubble on your legs and under your arms. Take care of that, will you? Thanks a bunch.

We no longer restrict your education because, in this modern world, we need you in the workplace. There are just not enough of US to go around. And we pay you exactly what we think you are worth which is less than we pay other men.

We are confident that we can maintain this status quo indefinitely. Why? Because, even though you have an equal right to vote, even though as a group you control 50% of any and all ballots, we are convinced that you are too foolish to organize yourselves - to use that voting power - to make any meaningful changes.

And even if you did, what changes would you make? Enact meaningful equal pay legislation? Crack down on crime? Put in place a real war on drugs? Spend money to improve the quality of education? Bring the troops home? Stop our perpetual involvement in foreign wars? And take action on all of the other things that need to be done to protect your children? Yikes! Sorry, can't allow that. We, the men, know where the money needs to go and those things just ain't a priority.

We know your husband ran off with his young, pretty secretary. We know your son is in Iraq and your daughter is in rehab. We know your balloon payment is overdue. But have a happy International Women's Day.

PS: Rumor has it that for 2009 its gonna be minis, beaufonts, and the return of those wonderful garter belts in virginal white. Shop early.

(afterthought) What would the world be like if only women owned guns?

cross posted from World Gone Mad

Hypocritical oath

By Capt. Fogg

I like the idea. Pennsylvania State Senator John Eichelberger, A Republican of course, has introduced a bill strategically titled the Conscientious Objection Act. Of course the idea of exempting someone from the draft because of conscientious objections to war isn't often associated with the Conservative "ethic" but Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1255 isn't about war, it's about birth control and abortion. It provides immunity for those hospitals and doctors who won't administer drugs designed to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching itself to the uterine wall and who won't perform abortions or inform a patient as to the availability thereof.

"A health care institution that declines to provide or participate in a health care service that violates its conscience shall not be civilly, criminally or administratively liable."

I'm amused by the suggestion that a corporation can be possessed of a conscience, but as I said, I like the idea. Forcing health care professionals to provide health care is after all, unnecessary government regulation and this sort of protection should be extended to other public service providers.

I would like to see firefighters and their departments allowed to pick and choose which buildings they protect and which people they will rescue according to their prejudices consciences and I would prefer that policemen not chase after those who commit crimes against atheists or pagans or followers of false religions. Souls are, after all, at stake.

Doctors should be given the freedom to treat or not treat certain afflictions according to conscience. Syphilis, after all was sent by Gawd to torment sinners along with a host of plagues he's provided to punish populations for their tolerance of sins and intolerance of religious rule. We shouldn't be interfering with his will in a country so dedicated to him that congress had to take time out last year to pass legislation to make sure GOD was more prominently displayed on new coins. In Gawd we trust and under Gawd we are.

The next time some terminally pregnant woman is at death's door because of a hydrocephalic fetus she can just die in the street for want of a "partial birth abortion" and the next time that 12 year old retarded girl knocked up by a hospital orderly wants the morning after pill she can forget about offending the consciences of the health care corporations. Gawd will be pleased.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Enough!

By Capt. Fogg


"Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor"

Matthew 19:21

"poverty is not an issue"

Father Jonathan Morris on Fox and Friends

________________

Hasn't anybody had enough of rapists, pederasts, embezzlers, adulterers, public toilet Lotharios, swindlers, the cognitively impaired, the psychotic and the high living patrons of prostitutes of both genders waving bibles and telling us how to vote? Not enough of us I guess. Apparently such tin horn casuists; such moral midgets who use Bibles as a sort of elevator shoe, still find a welcome at Fox News and Republicans stupid enough to think God likes Democracy almost as much as he likes Mike Huckabee still tune them in.

Father Jonathan Morris, a "conservative" Catholic priest told us on Fox and Friends yesterday that the reason there was "less response" from Democrats when it comes to talking about God, is that the Democratic platform is at odds with Biblical teachings. So it is, or at least at odds with the teachings of the Catholic Church which for well over a millennium has excommunicated anyone who dared deny that God appoints kings and prelates to rule them and told us that because questioning the government was questioning God, Democracy is of the Devil.

Perhaps Father Morris was too busy with the altar boys to study his "Ecclestical History for liars" course or to notice that the Bible doesn't mention abortion and tells us that life begins with breath, not conception. Of course the Bible, even the bowdlerized, mistranslated and tendentious Vulgate Bible the smug Father reads, commands all sorts of things that no one including the Pope would consider obeying, but Morris isn't a theologian or Biblical scholar or an historian or is he even honest or intelligent for that matter; he's a Republican Christian supremacist and Fox News pet. Like Shakespeare's Iago, he's all about convincing us that our best interests are served by killing the thing we love best and in this case that thing is freedom.

It shouldn't take a genius to realize that the aims of a united church and state are not democratic, but authoritarian. One does not arrive at commandments by voting and law based on commandments as interpreted by divinely inspired priests can be no part of a free society.

"Now, this is not judging any Democrat's individual faith, but when their platform goes against Biblical teaching they know they have to be careful when they start getting into details"

says Morris, carefully avoiding the details that show his ignorance and contempt for compassion and decency and liberty and all the human values the values voters can't handle. Indeed, the problem of poverty and how to treat the poor, the subject that seems to appear so often in the words of Jesus is secondary to stamping out abortion says the man in black. After all, the poor go to heaven but those single cell "babies" go elsewhere unless we sprinkle water on them and mumble in Latin, right? Screw the poor, the elderly and the sick. Screw the children and all hail the wealthy and powerful. Jesus is about persecuting gays and abortion, right?

"There's always a hierarchy of value"

says Morris with the kind of self contradictory gall that only a moral absolutist can muster, and by that he means the essential teaching of Christianity is about abortion and gays and not the poor. We can talk about the poor and sick and helpless later when we solve these greater problems. Do you need any better proof that there is no God who punishes us than that Morris is rewarded while innocent children starve and die for lack of medical care?

But as long as America avoids addressing it's imbecile problem; it's ridiculous fear of truth and its swooning submission to superstition and charlatans like Father Morris, we will continue to elect the Huckabees and the Romneys and the other Elmer Gantrys we always fall for. Unless we are willing to admit that the wisdom of the stupid only makes sense to the stupid; unless America is ready to have a reformation and a new birth of secularism we don't deserve any better.

Cross posted from Human Voices